A Rainy Day for a Rain Delayed Makeup Game: Tigers at White Sox

30 September 2008No Comment

Normally only one-game tiebreaker games take place on the Monday after MLB’s regular season ends. However, each year there are always some possibilities of a game that was rained out earlier in the season that will need to be made up on Monday if the 1st and 2nd place teams are only ½ games apart in the standings. Yesterday was that exception.

For the first time in 27 years, a team needed to make up a rained out game after the conclusion of the season. In 1981, the Royals and Indians made up a game on October 5. However, this game was to win the “second half championship” after the two month players’ strike. The true parallel to yesterday’s game took place 35 years ago when the Mets, Pirates and Cardinals all reached the end of the 1973 season which a chance for 1st place in the NL East. According to Jason Stark’s column on espn.com yesterday – “The Mets — who were 1½ games up on the Pirates and a game up on St. Louis — had just had three straight games rained out in Chicago on the final weekend but had only managed to make up one. Meanwhile, the Pirates still had to make up a rained out game from April against San Diego. So, it was the Pirates who were in roughly the same situation as the White Sox are this year. Pittsburgh needed to win its game at home, and hope the Mets got swept in an emergency makeup doubleheader in Chicago. But the Pirates lost to San Diego 4-3 while the Mets were winning Game 1. And that was that.”